How can you balance editing with timely content delivery?

Planning and prioritising are crucial for any internal communication project. Make sure you always use a project planning and management tool. Once you've planned your project, make sure you share the key dates and milestones with your main stakeholders and that you use the project plan to keep you all on track. If dates slip, adjust your plan accordingly.

Effective planning, collaboration, and communication are crucial to balance editing responsibilities with timely content delivery. Prioritize critical content and resources, simplify editing with templates and style guides, and establish an open line of communication to encourage user feedback. Routine reviews and refinements foster a culture of continuous improvement that effectively supports the needs of your audience.

Editing and content delivery are completely different parts of the brain. Because they are so different you must schedule them to have their own timeline. Putting a lot of editing into a three hour time span will allow you to get more done, then having a separate time to manage reviewing the edits is another three hour time span. When you are moving for content delivery, you are then in a production phase, totally different part of the brain and totally different energy. Also best done on different days. I break them up into unique timeslots.

Mantenha a comunicação aberta com sua liderança, agindo com transparência sobre seu trabalho e demandas em andamento, tendo sempre em mente as prioridades da organização. Dessa forma há como alinhar as expectativas de entrega, tanto com relação ao conteúdo quanto o tempo para a execução.

It's a good practice to have some of these recorded in a formal procedure / policy, so there's an objective source of truth whenever you start working on a new campaign or with a new stakeholder. A policy is a great way to describe approval processes and timelines, and to scale them to different scenarios / project sizes.

Este aspecto es super importante, puesto que generar expectativas que no van acorde con hechos concretos en una organización y con la dimensión del trabajo a realizar pueden causar la frustración del experto, quien no logra alcanzar a elaborar un trabajo de calidad y en línea con lo que se solicita. A su vez, se observa la inquietud de la propia organización, ya que ve al responsable de este desarrollo como alguien que no tomó en consideración los factores esenciales para cumplir con lo propuesto.

Editing is more than copy editing for grammar and punctuation. Advanced editing entails checks and balances for tone, voice, narrative threads, accuracy, and that any and all questions or concerns from the audience are addressed. Good editors actively seek to improve copy and provide the audience a dynamic and optimum experience. This takes time. In short: We must dedicate time in our day for editing and content production.

When it comes to the choice of editing tools and resources, what has proven to be helpful in my opinion is getting acquainted with the writing style that is most preferred by your company. For example, Oxford commas aren’t used in AP writing style, but they may have a place in some grammar checkers.

Artificial intelligence is going to be a real game changer here, being able to create drafts from scratch (or based on the language used in other documents) or improve readibility and accessibility of documents with a single click - significantly speeding up the editing process. Bear in mind that AI is not going to do all the work for you - it will still need to be properly briefed, and the output will need to be carefully reviewed to ensure its high quality.

You definitely want to edit content multiple times so that you can get to the outcome that you want for the reader. One stage of editing is simply getting the information into a usable, digestible format, and then strategically you want to work that content forward into structural language that is appropriate. The best editing is often reading it out loud to yourself to get the flow of the content and the cadence of how it is being understood. Editing is a dance, take your time and enjoy the journey. --

Reduce the editing and approval process by being empowered enough to produce and share content without engaging in lengthy processes.

Some last things to consider on editing and production is that you want to create a work flow system that makes sense to you, the reader, and for those who share knowledge. Often times, putting a group of ideas and articles together in layers helps other people take in the knowledge in layers that can build upon each other, and allows them more opportunity to share the content. --

Ask your SMEs to fact check not to review copy. Fact checking means they are literally ensuring the content is factual and right, whereas asking them to review the content suggests they need to check everything written - which they don’t.

Be proactive and create narratives around strategic topics and objectives. This way, you can use and reuse these messages to reduce editing, expedite approvals, and maintain consistency across the board.